Attention, focus and brain fitness

The fact that postponement (or procrastination) is now subject of numerous viral articles tells us that focusing on a particular task is becoming an increasingly difficult challenge for most of us, and especially for Internet users.

We have embraced multitasking in order to adapt to a digital lifestyle and, furthermore, we have adopted all sorts of digital behavior patterns, such as the obsessive check on one’s email, Facebook, newsfeed or phone. All these behaviors have reconfigured our brain in such a way that it can no longer focus on solving various types of problems that require attention to details.

This incapacity that we’ve recently earned is making us feel really frustrated. Therefore, we have begun to study it, in order to understand what causes it and how it works. However, even armed with new information on the subject we are not able to discard the problem.

Why does this happen? Mainly because information does not generate new brain patterns. Instead, ignoring old behavior patterns and creating new ones is done through repetition.

Practicing focus at school

A recent study carried out at Miami University and published this year in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience shows that the students that have taken part in a mindfulness training (MT) for a whole semester were able to focus better later on. As a result, they scored better at SART (Sustained Attention to Response Task), a very well-known neuropsychological test evaluating brain disjunctions.

Based on this study, the University has developed a permanent program comprising exercises that help people focus better while fighting the brain’s uncontrolled tendency to avoid the present.

Concentration exercises are common practices in Western and Eastern spiritual cultures. However, they have only recently caught the attention of Universities such as Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia or Penn State. The US Simon Fraser University has been the first University offering a Masters’ Degree in meditation and concentration techniques. They address different education experts or businessmen. Prof. Heesoon Bai, the one in charge of this Masters’ Degree, puts it:

“A university study program creates the perfect research universe for socio-philosophical premises to be examined, in order to explore knowledge and reality. We have come to address great questions and thus have managed to figure out that understanding and attention do more than change our lifestyles. They even influence the way we see life and our notion of well-being.

Attention from a neuronal standpoint

From a neuronal point of view, sustained attention is the brain’s ability to detect unpredictable signals over a long period of time. Neuroimaging studies show that the frontal cortex regions, especially the right hemisphere, are directly involved in the process of sustained attention.

Neuroscientists have identified two processes that work together in order to form what we call attention focus. Downwards processes imply the activation of an existing system which detects and selects stimuli based on what we already know. These processes start with individuals’ intention to focus on certain stimuli, blocking any outside noise competing for our brain’s resources. The other type of processes, the upwards ones, refer to the stimuli’s ability to catch and hold subjects’ attention.

Attention as monetary value and attention as a state of mind

Both cognitive processes that form the two main types of attention are essential for the way we understand reality and accomplish tasks. And both processes can be trained. Ironically though, simply understanding the mechanisms behind the process does not make it any better. Therefore, before starting to train our concentration capacity, we must first accept that attention is a limited resource that we use according to what we want in life. It is, in other words, one of the tools we use to win battles over our own brain that is trying to sabotage us.

Englishmen are proving to have a good linguistic intuition when they say “to pay attention”, as if attention was an internal resource you have to pay for. In Romanian, you say “be careful”, a fixed phrase that could rather be associated with the concept of “mindfulness”. If paying attention refers to an effort that you go through in order to reach a goal, being careful refers to an attitude towards reality and its requirements.

Both these approaches are important when managing the attention we need to accomplish tasks. The truth is that, every time we check our Facebook pages or immerse into newsfeeds, we consume precious and limited resources of our bodies. This could motivate us to avoid such disturbing stimuli that consume us. However, in order to overcome this stage, we need a pretty strong desire to do it.

Taking over the power

Eliminating the stimuli from our working environment contributes to the reduction of the upwards attention, which is our brain’s default. Another tendency of our brain is to switch from effort to pleasure (as we are always searching for instant gratification), by using the so-called ambient neural activity. That is why we might find ourselves immersed in uncontrolled thoughts, memories or scenarios even when we have a deadline to meet. It is our main system’s fault, as it produces trillions of neuronal connections at every instant, making us always process and reconfigure everything.

Brain’s monitoring techniques such as EEG and RMN show that, even when we are doing nothing, our brains are still performing an intense activity. This kind of activity is the default activity of the brain, taking place in the prefrontal cortex. It can easily be compared to the way a computer screen saver works.

Similar to a computer, the brain goes default when it loses concentration over one task. Erasing this state of mind that lets our thoughts deliriously hover around can be as simple as the touch of a mouse or pad, which is making the computer resume to the program that it had been previously running. In other words, in order to accomplish goals, plans and projects, we have to pay attention to overcome interior obstacles that could hinder success. And the main tools to win both battles are constant will and effort endurance.

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